unfortunately, you know today the average american doesn't realize that there's 40% of government services that they're not paying for. only one-third of medicare is paid for by those people who actually use it and because there's been this charade going on, where the left and right basically have conspired together to shield the american people from the true cost of government, we really don't have any constituency here to help reduce spending because we have not dealt with that issue, there's been no progress on the entitlement spending this is unfortunately going to carry on to the debt ceiling debate and what that means is every american is going to be harmed because the economy is not going to be what it should be. so because we have lacked the courage to face up to deal with these issues we here in washington are going to hurt the american economy we're going to hurt americans at every level, and to me it's just a travesty that we've not been willing to deal with this issue when for the last two years, jeff we have known this time is coming. no congress has been more prepared to deal